The Starter (7 page)

DAN:
Warrior? He’s from the Purist Nation! No Nationalite quarterback has
ever
led a team to a Tier One championship.
Eh
-ver. He’ll be lucky to live long enough to fail and go back to Tier Two. Let’s go to the callers. Line two from Citadel in the Tower Republic, go...

• • •

QUENTIN BARNES HAD NEVER SEEN
a real parade before. He certainly hadn’t been in one, and
most
certainly hadn’t been a guest of honor.

Back on Micovi, the fundamentalist theocracy frowned on such things. There were processionals, sure — somber marches for the latest martyr, a funeral train for a passed religious leader, that kind of thing. Long lines of people dressed in blue robes, chanting, swaying, self-flagellating, doing everything they could to show their grief and anguish lest a neighbor report them for not feeling
enough
grief and anguish. Not showing enough anguish might lead to an inquiry, probably an arrest, and — quite frequently — yet another funeral processional.

There was no shortage of funerals in the Purist Nation.

So Quentin Barnes had seen lines of people walking down a street and he’d seen throngs of people lining the sidewalks, but never anything like
this
. So much color. So much noise.

So much... joy.

Ionath City’s rad-free dome was two miles in diameter. A full circle around Fifth Ring Road made for a trip of over three miles. Three
slow
miles. Even with a phalanx of riot-geared Quyth Warrior police dishing out random beat-downs, adoring football fans were still climbing over barriers and running up to the sixteen grav-train cars that traveled down the road’s center lev-track.

“This is crazy,” Quentin said to Don Pine, who sat on his right. “I’ve
never
seen anything like this.”

Don nodded. He was smiling, waving a cupped hand with a practiced motion. He called it his
princess wave
. “You’ll get used to this, Q. At least I hope you do. As many times as I’ve done this, it’s hard to be jaded looking at all these happy faces. Just you wait until you win the big one — this is nothing in comparison.”

Quentin found it hard to believe he’d ever think of this teeming mass of sentients as “nothing.” The city had placed dividers down the middle of each two-lane road that ran along either side of the lev-track. That let orange- and black-clad fans fill half of the road, and the sidewalk beyond, and the diameter roads that ran deeper into the city. Every window in the red, hexagonal buildings had several heads of various species sticking out of it. Krakens flags flew everywhere, from the small, hand-held kind to giant flags that were probably ten feet high and twenty feet long. Banners, flags, pom-pons, foam fingers, foam pincers, foam tentacles, jackets, hats, jerseys — more orange and black than Quentin had even known existed.

Ionath City’s urban dome normally held somewhere around 110,000 residents in claustrophobic closeness. Considering the dome was just about the only place most of the Ionath Krakens players could breathe, that was where they held the parade, and that was where an estimated one
million
additional beings had packed in tight.

Quentin felt an elbow bump on his left arm. He turned to look at Yitzhak, who sat in the seat next to him.

“Q,
smile
, will ya?” Yitzhak said. “Maybe try not to look like an anthropomorphic hayseed?”

“Shuck you, Zak,” Quentin said, but he smiled and waved. Hard to think that just hours earlier there had been functioning roads, packed sidewalks, grav-cars, taxis, trucks, and trains. Now? Nothing but Humans, HeavyG, the three castes of Quyth, some Ki, and even a few Sklorno females all wrapped up from head to toe. Sentients lined the barriers, at least a hundred deep.

Quentin didn’t know what
anthropomorphic
meant, but he did know the word
hayseed
.

And that wasn’t what he was. Not anymore.

“Don’t worry about it,” Don said. “No one is here to see you, anyway, kid — they’re here to see their
hero
.”

Yitzhak laughed and stood, holding his T2 Tourney MVP trophy high, waving it at the adoring crowd. Quentin had to smile at the third-string quarterback’s exuberance. Zak was soaking up the moment.

The Krakens had earned promotion to T1 with their semi-final win over the Texas Earthlings, while the Chillich Spider-Bears had won their promotion with a semi-final victory over the Citadel Aquanauts. The actual T2 Tourney championship game hadn’t mattered. That was why Zak played. Both Quentin and Don Pine had sat out the final championship game, as had most of the starters. The Chillich Spider-Bears had done the same, fielding an entire team of backups. That was just smart football — both teams had already qualified for Tier One, let the starters rest up for the big time.

So Zak started the championship game, but he didn’t care about starters or second string or third string — he’d played his butt off and led the Krakens to a win. The win meant a “championship,” and that meant a parade.

Quentin, Don, and Yitzhak rode in the front seat of the second train car. Since Ionath City was domed, weather was always controlled and all train cars were open-air.

Public transit train cars had seven rows of species-specific seats that always went in the same order: Quyth Leader and Warrior, then Human, HeavyG, Ki, and Sklorno. Human rows had five seats, HeavyG only three to handle the wider bodies. Sklorno rows had those strange, abdomen-supporting seats the ladies required. Ki seats were little more than flat beams that allowed the long creatures to rest their multiple legs. Quyth Workers had their own train cars, as they weren’t allowed to use the same facilities as Leaders and Warriors.

The three quarterbacks had a train car all to themselves. City leaders had wanted to stretch the parade out, so each of the sixteen cars in the procession held three to five players or team staff.

The car ahead of Quentin’s was the parade’s lead car. It held three Quyth Leaders: Coach Hokor the Hookchest, his yellow and black fur puffed up to full thickness; Gredok the Splithead, his glossy black fur as smooth and unruffled as ever; and an orange- and black-furred leader that Don had said was the mayor of Ionath City. The mayor apparently had
white
fur, but painted it up in Krakens colors for the big parade.

In the seat behind those leaders rode Choto the Bright and Virak the Mean, who had returned along with Gredok. Quentin couldn’t even look at them without feeling a simmering rage. Both of the linebackers had casts on their legs. As tough as the two of them were, apparently there was someone tougher. Quentin thought he’d extricated Virak from goon-duty, but apparently there was more work to be done. The linebacker’s primary job was now football, but he was still dangerous enough that Gredok would use him whenever the situation demanded it. For a public event like this, Virak and Choto would stay close to Gredok, their leader, their
Shamakath
.

Even Doc, the team’s physician, participated in the parade. A Harrah, Doc flew in slow circles around the lead car, his wide, stingray-like wings gracefully pushing him along. Orange and black streamers trailed from his tapered tail.

In the train cars somewhere behind Quentin were all of his teammates: Yassoud, Mum-O-Killowe, Stockbridge, Denver, his fullback Tom Pareless and dozens more — the sentients that had pulled together to put the Krakens in Tier One.

The players of the Ionath Krakens.

His
players.

His, because now the team was his to lead. Don Pine had said so, passing the torch of leadership in front of High One and everyone else. And all of this screaming, adoring insanity from the fans? Don was right, this was just the beginning. If these sentients thought they were happy now, wait until Quentin Barnes rode down these streets, holding the Galaxy Bowl trophy high in the air.

Like they did whenever there was a crowd, his eyes scanned the Human faces, hunting for a familiar one, one he assumed he would remember but could not be sure.

Quentin again felt an elbow hit his left shoulder. Yitzhak leaned in close to Quentin’s ear.

“Q, come
on
,” Zak said. “This is face-time for you, pay attention to the crowd.”

“I am paying attention.”

“No, you’re staring these sentients down like they’re linebackers showing a blitz. This is part of the game, Q. We need to bring your popularity up so we can get you some fat endorsement money.”

“I get paid plenty.”

Yitzhak threw his head back and laughed. “Yeah, right. Who’s your agent?”

“I don’t have one.”

Yitzhak leaned away, gave Quentin a funny look. “Seriously?”

Quentin shrugged. “Gredok bought my existing contract, I don’t need an agent.”

“Hooooo,” Zak said. “Brother, I’ll make a few calls. I can help you.”

Quentin shook his head. “Thanks, third-string, but I can actually change my own diapers from time to time.”

Yitzhak waggled the MVP trophy in front of Quentin’s face. “
Third-string?
Hayseed, just run your hands across this bad boy!”

Quentin took the offered trophy. It
was
rather nice. A wooden base with a thin chrome pole that supported a regulation-size football made of faceted crystal. The trophy caught the lights from the sun high above, sparkling with intense, rainbow colors.

“Nice, huh?” Yitzhak said.

Quentin handed it back, and nodded. “Yep, I got to admit, that’s a sweet piece of hardware.”

“Damn right it is,” Zak said. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to revel in my moment.”

Yitzhak raised the trophy high in both hands, smiling and showing off for a crowd that roared in approval.

Quentin sat, his hand waving like an automaton while his eyes went back to searching the crowd.

And then he saw something that held his attention. Off to the right, on the outside of the ring road, a Human wearing a Krakens’ jacket. The man visually scanned the parade vehicles much the same way Quentin scanned the crowd. Not looking
at
something, looking
for
something. Something in particular.

Quentin laughed to himself — he
was
looking at the crowd like it was a defense. That Human guy he’d just noticed, for example: the guy’s eyes darted around like a linebacker hunting for an open gap, looking for a lineman’s pointing foot to give away the direction of the play. And those two big Humans in front of the linebacker-man, they might be defensive linemen...

Quentin stared closer. The two big Humans, they held that same aura of intensity as the first man. And they were right in front of the linebacker-man, one on his left, one on his right.

Positioned in front, just like blockers.

Blockers that were about to clear a hole.

Quentin had spent a decade working in the mines of Micovi, a place where people died almost every day. Sometimes they died from cave-ins. Sometimes from roundbugs. Sometimes from the stonecats that lurked in the bigger crevices, waiting for a miner to stray too far away from the others. But most often, people died because they were killed by other people. Everything from vendettas, to loan sharks making an example, to basic theft gone wrong, or — most often — simple arguments that quickly blossomed into honor fights. To stay alive, you had to learn to read people, read their faces, scan for bad moods, for desperation, for anything that could make one person want to kill another. Sometimes Quentin had to fight. When he did, he made sure everyone understood that to step up to him was to get shredded. Most of the time, however, Quentin avoided fights because he learned to identify dangerous people and stay out of their way. The mines taught him that all the toughness in the galaxy is no armor against a knife in the back.

And the Purist Nation had a lot of knives.

Quentin lived through a decade in the mines, from five years old until he joined the Micovi Raiders football team at fifteen; stayed alive because he knew how to read people. Read bad people. And that linebacker-looking Human and his two blockers? They looked bad.

“Yitzhak,” Quentin said. “Let me hold your trophy for a second.”

“No way,” Yitzhak said. “Know why? Because you’re not the MVP, Q. Sure, you’re the franchise and all that, but ol’ Yitzhak is the —”

Quentin stood and reached to his left. His eyes stayed on the three Humans, but his backhanded sweep plucked the crystal MVP trophy right out of Yitzhak’s clutches.

“Hey,” Yitzhak said, a hint of a whine coloring his voice. “Come on, give it back.”

Quentin just shook his head. The three Humans pressed toward the barrier, to the line of Quyth Warrior police. Quentin saw that the men would reach the barriers just about the time Gredok’s train car passed their position.

A hand on Quentin’s right shoulder. “Q, what is it?” Don Pine again, but no humor in his voice this time. Quentin just nodded toward the men.

Don looked, taking it in for a second. “They trouble?”

“Is
who
trouble?” Yitzhak said. “And can I have my trophy back, please?”

The two big Humans leaned forward and threw Quyth Workers out of the way, picking them up and tossing them aside. Orange- and black-clad bodies flew, some shoved away, some pushed down, some diving for cover. The closest cops — one Quyth Warrior, one Ki — turned to address the surging threat. Quentin took it all in, every detail, his brain suddenly as hyper-alert as it sometimes got on the field during games.

The cops did everything right. They brandished shock batons, shouted warnings, moved to the barrier to use it as a partial shield. They did everything right to handle the two
blockers
, but they weren’t ready for the third man.

The two big Humans jumped on the barrier and dove at the cops, catching stun batons full in the chest. Both Humans shook from the electrical charge, but their momentum carried them over the barriers and into the cops, pushing the cops back just enough to create a seam. The first Human squeezed through, hurdling the barrier like a running back jumping over a fallen lineman.